Saturday, 28 September 2013

hEr_Volution Workshop - How it went and how you can get involved!

When I was seven years old, I received a microscope for Christmas from my parents. I used to play with it for hours on end – looking at the slides of bugs and bacteria that came with the set. From that point on, I was hooked and knew I wanted to have a future career in science. I had many great teachers through out my school years and family that cultivated that curiosity into a passion.

Unfortunately, some girls do not get that opportunity to grow and explore science due to limited access and social pressures. I knew I wanted to use my positive experience as a woman in Medical Laboratory Science to mentor girls to consider STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers as an option in the future. In my travels on Twitter, I came across hEr_Volution, an organization promoting STEM education in Canada to female students. Immediately, I reached out to see how I could be involved with them and promote what they were doing. After having a great phone conversation with Doina, the Executive Director of hEr_Volution, I was invited to host a workshop about my experience.

On August 24th, I had the pleasure of hosting a workshop for hEr_Volution at the Microsoft Store in Yorkdale Shopping Centre. I was able to speak about my experience as a Medical Laboratory Science student at The Michener Institute as well as provide insight to how vaccines are made and how medical testing is done. For a lot of younger children, this area is not touched in school until high school and it was great to be able to expose them to this line of work early on. I also included a fun hands-on activity to make “candy DNA” to teach the girls about the structure and function of DNA molecules!

Workshop attendees included young girls between the ages of 5-12 and also Toronto area educators that were looking how to further their knowledge about the Medical field. I had some great discussions on how to teach DNA techniques and testing to younger students in a concept then understand. Any opportunity to get science into schools in a fun way is something I support!

Myself with Executive Director Doina Oncel with her daughters Sarah and Maya

I am honoured I was able to represent Medical Laboratory Science and female scientists to encourage girls to consider STEM careers. I strongly encourage you to get involved in your community and to visit hervolution.org to find out more about their work.